Mike Kelley

The Marciano Art Foundation has been the biggest pleasant surprise of 2017. As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, the new museum, funded by the GUESS Jeans fortune, delivers big-time with site-specific special projects from Jim Shaw and Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. Those installations are so enthusiasm-inspiring it’s almost easy to overlook the “quieter” collection itself, on display mainly in the third floor galleries.

That would be a mistake, because the collection—the bones of the Marciano Art Foundation—has been curated in such a satisfying , thoughtfully-paced manner that the viewing experience stays engaging throughout. That’s a rarity, unfortunately, in so many hangs of private collections, which tend not to have a specific focus beyond showing off their holdings. Here, though, there are narrative interests evident in the Marcianos’ collection, perhaps highlighted by the apocalyptic nature of the Jim Shaw show and the site-specific “behind-the-scenes” vibe of the Trecartin/Fitch collaboration—namely an interest in social tension or upheaval and works that reveal their process, respectively.

In a past life, Mexico City’s Museo Universitario Del Chopo was a punk flea market. Today, it’s gone back to it roots (kinda).Punk. Sus rastros en el arte contemporáneo is a fantastic survey of both punk and its impact on contemporary art. But when so much of that influence has been on video art, the logic of a gallery presentation is questionable.
The show feels a bit like it should be a film festival but has been squeezed into a white box. Good luck trying to sit through more than a dozen videos with overlapping sound on different loops.

Now that the country has elected a threatening Wizard of Oz figure for president, any art that takes aim at the myth of American exceptionalism feels pretty relevant. The democratic dream created in 1787 looks a lot like a nightmare in 2016. And with the news of White House staff and potential Cabinet appointments reading like a list of supervillains, it’s refreshing when art can articulate a pointed skepticism of America’s promise.

Alex Da Corte’s A Man Full Of Trouble at Maccarone provides some of that much-needed critique. The work here launches a timely reassessment of America through a combination of its storied colonial past and its kitsch-filled, worn out present.

Expect the next three days to be filled with election news. Events are largely election related, and thus I will be wearing pant suits the whole god damned time. (Go Hillary!) Once that’s passed, there’s a whack of openings in Chelsea Thursday—Andreas Gursky, Paul McCarthy, etc—a must-see ceramics inspired show at Present Company in Bushwick Friday, and Smack Mellon’s 20th Anniversary exhibition Saturday. In short, nothing, not even an election, disrupts the art world.

Howard Halle reviews the Mike Kelley show at Hauser & Wirth, but I can’t tell if he likes it. (He gives the show five stars, so I guess the answer is that he does.) He sees great sadness in the show. Like Superman, the subject of the exhibition, Kelley comes from the rust belt. Halle says that the people who destroyed industry in that part of the nation are the same people who are now underwriting the art world. Who are these people he’s talking about? [Time Out]

Holland Cotter gives the new Archibald Motely show up at the Whitney the thumbs up. “It has features that many bigger, sexier exhibitions lack,” he writes, “an affecting narrative, a distinctive atmosphere and a complicated political and moral tenor.” We agree. [The New York Times]

Good lord. An artist painting an anti-violence mural was shot in Oakland. Terrible. [Hyperallergic]

There is now an art loans database. Only $799 per year for access courtesy of Skate’s. Can anyone tell us what people do with this information? We assume it’s for investment purposes. [Artnews]

Former Knoedler gallery director Ann Freedman and the now-shuttered gallery will go to trial for two cases involving sale of fake Abstract Expressionist paintings. Judge Gardephe denied Freedman and the gallery’s motions for summary judgment in the lawsuits lodged by New York collector John Howard and Sotheby’s chairman Domenico De Sole and his wife, Eleanore. His reasons will be explained forthcoming Memorandum Opinion and Order but no date on when that would be released was given. I bet that’s going to be juicy. [The Art Newspaper]

“’Dismaland’ is spectacular, but its ideas are not everything you want a candidate for history’s largest work of conceptual art to be.” Dan Brooks argues that sarcasm is the new kitsch—the default tone of the internet and now an unfortunate end unto itself in the production of culture. “As with memes, Banksy asks us to substitute the sensation of recognizing a reference for the frisson of wit.” [The New York Times]

More galleries opened in the Lower East Side than any other neighborhood in 2015. Still, Chelsea is by far the capital of the city’s art scene, contrary to reports of a mass exodus in the face of rising rents. Surprisingly, Bushwick seems to not be living up to its hype as the new art destination: only three new galleries have arrived there this year, less than DUMBO and the Upper East Side. [Crain’s]

Where do famous artists teach? This piece could be handy for art-school-shopping, despite its unfortunate “listicle” format. SVA’s MFA candidates get one-on-one time with Fred Wilson and Marilyn Minter, while Ai Weiwei might be offering courses at Univeristät der Künste Berlin next month. [artnet News]

Does the drama surrounding Anish Kapoor’s “Dirty Corner” never cease? Versailles municipal councilor Fabien Bouglé has filed a complaint against Kapoor in response to the artist’s decision to not remove anti-semetic graffiti from the sculpture. Kapoor’s statement: “I think it’s a wonderful reversal; I’ll see him in court… It shows how insane the whole thing is.” Yes, it is insane. So why won’t he just let them power-wash it? [Artforum]

How many more Pablo Picasso shows can MoMA launch? Normally, isn’t a show that would begin to interest us, (we agree with Hyperallergic’s Benjamin Sutton, who describes Picasso as “the Steven Spielberg of European modernism — flashy, prolific, proficient at a vast range of genres, and overrepresented in the mainstream cultural canon.”) but it seems to be getting good reviews. Sutton says there are a number of surprising and inventive works. Roberta Smith at the Times loves the show so much she called the exhibition art. And then there’s the ridiculously titled Jerry Saltz review, “How Picasso the Sculptor Ruptured Art History”. We haven’t been able to bring ourselves to read that one—he makes the show sound like an injury that occurred during sex—but he clearly likes it. [The Internet]

This is really cool. The Hamabul Art Collective is opening the unofficial “Iranian Embassy in Jerusalem”. The group is made up of Israeli, Persian, and Arab artists who hope to spark dialog by highlighting Iranian art, film, and music in spite of their respective governments’ refusals to engage in diplomatic or economic relations. [The Art Newspaper]

Jane Rosenberg, the artist behind the infamously-bad courtroom sketch of Tom Brady, is now seeking legal action against unauthorized reproductions of the portrait. In the past few weeks, it’s showed up on T-shirts, mugs, and phone cases. If she ends up in a courtroom herself, she should cash in with a self-portrait. [The Boston Globe]

An incredible review by Michael H. Miller on Mike Kelley’s show at Hauser & Wirth. On the glass maquettes of Kandor, the capital city of Krypton, Superman’s home planet, Miller says the work makes him feel incredibly sad. “ Curators and dealers seem to be pushing for Kandor as a major part of Kelley’s legacy—or maybe the work is just easier to get on loan—but either way I find so much of it to be mediocre. “Kandor” seems to me to be the product of a man endlessly tinkering with an idea but never really getting it to arrive anywhere beyond Kelley’s general metaphor of alienation…” [ARTnews]